AI and IP and Hollywood, Oh My!
AI can and will destroy Hollywood. Why and what you can do about it. This first post is about AI movie making. Which will destroy the industry. And Hollywood.
AI could substitute for up to one-fourth of current work. Goldman Sachs, Global Economics Analyst, March 2023
Hollywood is shut down after the writers and actors go on strike against major studios. A major stumbling block is the use of AI to replace workers. Variety, July 25, 2023
Sixty Senators meet with twenty CEO’s of the world’s largest companies behind closed doors to discuss AI. The meeting "may go down in history as very important to the future of civilization." Elon Musk. Axios, September 14, 2023
Why, AI?
Why is this happening? Sure we had movies like Terminator and The Matrix warning about AI.
Arnold in Terminator 2 :Judgment Day
But why the escalation in Real Life now?
Because the "new" form of AI, Generative AI, is easy to talk to and produces output that is indistinguishable from human output.
AI Movie Making - Hey kids let's put on a show!
www.runwayml.com is a website with an AI movie making program and it can create a four second movie out of a “prompt” (text instruction) and a still picture.
I told it "Julie is looking from side to side" and uploaded a picture of me:
I didn't tell it who Julie was or what looking was or side to side was.
I then clicked generate…and I got this movie back:
It's kind of creepy TBH but the AI is free and in its first months...
To compare and contrast here is 4 sec of me in RL:
Obviously there is a lot more detail than in the AI generated movie but we will leave that aside right now because the tech is new.
What is amazing is a movie has been created, based on nothing more than a still photo and a basic instruction. It dropped half of the instruction (only to one side, but that might have been due to the four second time limit).
I didn’t have to identify who Julie was or what looking was or side to side. It knew what to do.
Why is this a big deal?
Movies generally take time and effort to produce. I have a significant investment in equipment between cameras, computers, lenses, software, lights, etc. for the work I do. And multiply me by thousands, because there are more creators than ever using more equipment than ever. And add the commercial studios and their needs. Here in Hollywood and greater LA the economy runs on the production business. It's estimated the area has lost at least $3 billion since the strike started and production shut down. CNBC, August 9, 2023.
Productions Cost, and Spend, Money
Movies are made in three stages, and each one is a percentage of the total budget. A typical production workflow with costs looks like this:
Pre production. Planning for production stage, Acquiring talent, scripts, locations, equipment, etc. Costs are somewhere around 20% of a Production Budget
Production. Filming. Costs are somewhere around 65% of a Production Budget
Post Production. Editing, Titles, Special Effects, etc. Costs are somewhere around 15% of a Production Budget
Notes: These are all SWAG Rules of Thumb. Depending on everything. Marketing etc. costs are not considered.
AI Minimizes or Eliminates Every Single Production Cost
Alfred Hitchcock was famous for sketching out his movies in enormous detail preproduction and shooting them exactly like his sketches.
A storyboard from his movie Stage Fright(1950) shows how Hitchcock wanted a scene:
With AI, and in a few years from now, Hitchcock could have gone from story boards to movie without any other costs. (He hated working with actors too.)
Hitchcock’s set for Rear Window…would be unnecessary - and the people too.
Making a Movie with a Made Up Person
I fed a few pictures of me into a generative AI Art website and it generated pictures of me in different styles:
I then took one image (a pretty good one TBH but why not? Cheesecake sells…) and fed it to the movie making generative AI and told it “Turns head and smiles”
I got this:
So I used a fake image of me to create a movie without any production step and minimal pre and postproduction.
And without those costs, in money and time and people.
And sure the technology is primitive and a little creepy but it just became available...and AI teaches AI btw (another feature of AI but not right now.)
Not to be Alarmist But…
If AI minimizes or eliminates the need for the physical production of movies it will minimize or eliminate the need for production and its costs. If the current strikes have caused $3-$4 billion in damages to Hollywood and LA, then ceasing production entirely will minimize or eliminate the need for people and companies to produce and the damages would be incalculable.
This can’t happen. Later in the series, I’ll talk about what advice I would give the studios and what I advice I would give the actors and writers so it doesn’t.
But first - the series continues with more exploration of this brand new area to make sure we are all on common ground…
no not this HOLLYWOOD 2038 - Created By AI
NEXT: How AI may well destroy IP too … Really.